Old Colony Memorial Thursday June 26, 1997

Shakespeare by the beach

Priscilla Beach's
Tempest has it all

By Robert Knox
MPG Newspapers

PLYMOUTH - A deposed head of state, living on a nearly deserted island, plots his revenge. He has enslaved the local population. He is served by supernatural forces, including an androgynous airy spirit, a role which generally poses a huge casting problem. His daughter falls in love with the first man (almost literally) she sees. The deposed duke has become a wizard, and when his enemies sail past the island he whips up a storm in order to trap them there and exact his revenge.

The Tempest, Shakespeare's last play if you disregard some messy collaborations that may have come later, has a lot going on - almost too much. It's a play about theater versus life, about forgiveness, about government and morality. It's an ambitious play to mount; and the Priscilla Beach Theatre production which opened last weekend doesn't leave anything out. It's a brave, honest show, carried by some strong performances, and anybody interested in seeing Shakespeare live (including first-timers piqued by last year's movies) shouldn't miss the chance to see a real Shakespeare play in a local theater.

The play is not only full of ideas, it's full of words, and a lot of them are justly familiar. "We are such stuff as dreams are made on,/ and our little life is rounded with a sleep" -- this is from Prospero, the former Duke of Milan. Prospero also says, "Our revels now are ended," and a half-dozen other lines that are continually quoted, alluded to or borrowed today for any context whatsoever. "0 brave new world!" is Miranda's line - and it's the butt of crushing irony. "...That hath such people in it," she concludes. Miranda has just laid eyes for the first time on the shipwrecked courtiers, her father's old enemies. " 'Tis new to thee," he dryly replies. Yet this is the world Prospero is desperate to return to, so desperate he will sacrifice his magical powers to it. "And this rough magic I will abjure," he says, vowing to break his staff, a moment that generations of audiences have understood as the master playwright's own farewell to the heady magic of the theater.

Actor Ed Szydlik, who played the role of Creon in Priscilla Beach's production of Antigone last summer, plays Prospero and gives the production the steady anchor it needs. Szydlik looks and sounds right for the part and maintains a supple command of the language throughout, no easy task. Prospero is a patriarch, a thundergod authority figure with patches of feigned and real irascibility and some striking (and puzzling) sore spots. He comes out on the right side, but to do the role its fullest justice you should be not quite sure be will, a nuance Szydlik's performance is conscious of particularly in a crucial scene with servant spirit Ariel. Ariel tells him" it would move you" to see how distraught the courtiers are from the apt punishment -- consciousness of their sins -- Prospero has conjured for them. Would you forgive them? Prospero asks him. I would, Ariel tells him, were I human. His candor tips the balance in his master's mind, but this play's Ariel, 9-year-old Maximilian Martucelli, doesn't appear aware of how important his contribution is, which is a very good reading for this line. Martucelli is wonderful as a charming sprite, clear and strong in his lines and loaded with stage presence. At 9, he can costume in glitter and cavort about the stage or slip between a villain's sword and his victim, without seeming to try too hard.

Caliban is one of the Shakespearean characters scholars are most interested in these days. The PC reading sees him as an oppressed colonial, which is a stretch. James Henderson does a marvelous Caliban, picking up right from the text's description of the witch-spawned beast-man's animalistic, deprived and also depraved qualities. His Caliban snorts, growls, cowers, cajoles, leers, threatens, and in the course of his aborted assassination plot with two drunken mariners, has a growth experience. The actor's fine voice and excellent diction show off the famous lines to advantage. "Thou hast taught me speech," Caliban complains, "and my profit on it is I know how to curse," and, "I am all the subjects you have, that first was my own king." Shakespeare lets his morally unattractive characters make a strong case for themselves (as he does, say, with Shylock), but the text still shows them clearly for themselves.

Henderson's physical comedy works well, and Karin Page and Freya Schlegel are very funny and accomplished as the drunken mariners, whom Caliban, under the same ironic wonder that lays low Miranda, mistakes for gods and heroes when the ocean drops them on his island. Jen Pentecost and Page also do a good job with, respectively, the ingenue Miranda and the windy but utopian-minded Gonzalo. Not all the supporting roles are played to that standard, and there are points when you wish the company had given into the difficulties and cut some lines.

Directed by Geronimo Sands, The Tempest plays two more weeks at Priscilla Beach Theatre in Manomet, with performances June 27-28 and July 2,3 and 5, all at 8;30 p.m. Tickets are $10.